another photographer's blog

Built To Last

Here’s a film I made last month with former U.S service men and women some who are now employees of Stanley Black & Decker in Baltimore and Washington DC. The film was released on the 11th of November to commemorate Veteran’s Day in 2018. Each contributor reads a line from President Eisenhower’s proclamation which he read on the very first Veteran’s Day in 1954.

For many years, Stanley Black & Decker has worked closely with Wounded Warrior Project, an organization that exists to connect, serve, and empower injured military personnel. With a focus on improving health, well-being, and quality of life, WWP has been meeting the growing needs of warriors, their families, and caregivers since 2003.

The idea of the film was to illustrate how veterans have made sacrifices to protect our freedom, so that we can live in a better world, and to highlight the Veterans Employee Resource Group which was formed to support veterans to pursue career opportunities and have access to resources, mentoring and training to advance personal development.

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About Gray Hughes photographer

Gray Hughes grew up in southwest London but has always had strong connections to the USA. He has spent many summers on road trips, visiting family in California. In his early twenties he moved to New York and assisted various fashion photographers before returning to London to shoot editorial sports and lifestyle.
He soon graduated into shooting commercially for brands including Coca-Cola, Asics, Nike, Adidas, Reebok and Powerade.
Gray has always loved film and music – his mother exposed him to Hitchcock at an inappropriately young age. As a young teen he used to record music demos on a four track recorder. Then in 2001 he took a break from photography to pursue a career in music, remixing dance music for four years before returning to his first love, photography.
Gray’s personal projects have taken him to cowboy country in Montana, USA as well as Rio de Janeiro and more recently, around the grassroots rugby clubs of Britain. His film, ‘Heartland’ was a finalist in the 2015 AOP awards, with the accompanying photographs featured in the Sunday Times Magazine.
He directed his first commercial for Glamorgan Brewing Company in 2015 and then subsequently joined Ridley Scott Associates where he was added to the photgraphy and moving image roster, he is on an indenpendent arrangement while he grows his show-reel so is free to collaborate with other production companies.
So far this year he has directed films for Reebok and Standard Life and has shot a global advertising campaign for Vodafone.